July 14th-15th, 2016

STRANGE SHORE: London, England.

SUNDRY LAND: United Kingdom

WANDERING WAY: Conversation with an Italian Philosopher, and “Painters’ Paintings” at the National Gallery & The Wallace Collection

Best Conversation with an Italian Philosopher

When I had the good fortune to meet my Milanese friend Cristina as she completed her philosophy dissertation at Columbia, I didn’t know that one summer our busy schedules would overlap at the very moment when the European Union would lose its British member. By my reckoning, an Italian Philosopher is the best person on earth with whom to discuss European politics – she offered some perspective on the tragic events of the last thirty days, a perspective that an American alien like myself couldn’t approximate in a lifetime.

When we made the plan to meet for tea and cake at the London Review Bookshop at 3pm on July 15^th, neither of us could’ve guessed that a terrorist would drive into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day the night before. A pall fell over a jittery London, or maybe that was just my reaction.

On my way to meet Cristina, I saw reporters line up to photograph the flowers and rolled-up flags at the French Embassy, but the London streets were still filled with the tourists of July. It felt surreal. Everyone seemed so normal: tour guides called for their flocks to gather, school groups bustled in brightly-colored shirts, and fashionistas tottered on heels far too high. Crowds clenched around buskers in Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus, but I kept thinking about the split-second when this sense of security snapped as horror hit. Hadn’t those people been flocking, bustling, and tottering, too?

Behave as if nothing’s happened – that’s what they say in New York: if you don’t go about business as usual, you’ve let the terrorists win. Okay, but all these people must be thinking about Nice, right? I was.

In such a state of mind, it’s a relief to see your smiling Italian friend. Tea was ordered, cake was ordered, and jovial feasting commenced. But in no time at all, we found ourselves talking about BREXIT and the strange mood that had overtaken London. We were both foreigners who had spent considerable time in the city before this summer, but things were different now.

How weird it is to witness England unstrung – Cristina joked that as soon as parliament was thrown into chaos, the British started acting like Italians. We both had stories. While taxi drivers had provoked and teased me on prior visits, pro-BREXIT cabbies had grown acrimonious – in a single week, American Sharon and Italian Cristina had been taken on drives to unrequested stops and dropped off far afield even as we endured diatribes about immigrants. EU academic grants have already been cut in England – Cristina knew people who’d lost funding. In return, the British have stopped contacting Europeans about job offers that were already on the table. I talked about the Londoners wearing safety pins to signal support of immigrants, and then there were the reports that hate speech and hate crime had risen by five times since BREXIT. The haters had come out, which is difficult to remember on a perfect summer day in the city you’ve loved so long.

In a single month, we’d both felt that London had turned into a place where we were unwelcome, and Cristina was as relieved to be leaving on Saturday as I will be to leave on Tuesday. I have to believe that London will revert to some new kind of normal, but right now, it’s…tense. Unstrung.

When we exchanged our iPhone camera rolls, Cristina showed me a fantastic picture: she was beaming with windswept hair in front of Stonehenge. As we all know, Stonehenge rocks.

“You should post it!” I enthused.

She gave me a kind smile before commenting that it’s been so awful in the last month that it hasn’t felt right to post the typical smiley Facebook posts.

She’s so right, isn’t she? Let’s review the last thirty-three days: The Orlando mass killing, BREXIT, the mass killing in Bangladesh, the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton B. Sterling, the shooting of five police officers in Dallas, the mass killing in Nice, and then the Turkish coup. In thirty-three days.

I agreed, “Yeah, it does. Doesn’t it?” Then I hesitated, feeling guilty, “It’s felt weird to write the blog, actually. I want to talk about my trip, but how can I talk about my trip without writing about those things, too? But I’m not sure how to write about them…” I paused to figure out how to articulate an amorphous feeling that had grown over the last week in London – I attempted to put it in words to Cristina that afternoon:

“I see these things. This art. I went to the National Gallery. The Wallace Collection, and there are these paintings from the 1800s…and then from the turn of the century. There are all these painters in the 1880s and the 1890s and the 1900s, and they’re going on grand tours. They’re seeing a Europe that doesn’t exist anymore, and they’re traveling all the way up to 1913. Then it stops. This certain kind of painting – this world. It just stops. It reminds me of Henry James coming back to the United States in 1904, and he didn’t recognize the place. It was his homecoming, and his home was gone. But then the Europe of his novels would be over, too. 10 years afterwards. Those places and people and things: they wouldn’t exist anymore. He wrote about a world almost already over. Now, I know this sounds weird or twee or something, Cristina, but I feel like the heroine out of one of his novels. James’s. And I’m seeing a world that won’t exist soon. I don’t mean to sound apocalyptic or dark or anything, but I’ve been wondering if I’ll ever see this Europe again. The Europe of ‘right now’. I mean, what’s happening? There are all these historical movements, these rises and dips, you know? We both know. Then, I look at all this art, and I wonder what’ll happen to it. Maybe it’s an excuse, but I think I’ve got to write about it right now. Because…it feels. It feels, I don’t know. It feels like something’s ending or changing. Fast. Yeah, I hate those happy, smiley-smiley face pictures on Facebook. Because…they don’t feel right, but there’s something about being here now that is right because everything’s changing, and I wonder sometimes if it’ll be same next year.”

So, in classic Sharon-style, I thought aloud long enough to arrive at some sort of point. It does feel right to keep writing even though I’m reeling from the events of the last few days. I’m relieved to be leaving on Tuesday, and I wonder if London will feel any (more) different when I return to city on August 20^th. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, Cristina and I did take some smiley-face photos, which I’ll attach just because it’s the only record I have of a thought-provoking afternoon:

Plus, how many times will I be photographed with a glamorous Italian?

More to the point, I’ll offer my thoughts on The National Gallery’s spectacular “Painters’ Paintings” exhibit and the exact moment when “The Wallace Collection” blew open my mind.

Sexiest Fan Boy – Sir Anthony van Dyck

Joy suffused my entire being at the “Painters’ Paintings” exhibit at the National Gallery – how validating that Lucian Freud, Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, Frederic Leighton, George Frederic Watts, Thomas Lawrence, Joshua Reynolds, and Anthony van Dyck were uncontrollable, impulsive art collectors…just like me! Wonderful. Although the exhibition showcased the unbelievably good taste of all these painters – as well as the ways in which their own favorite painters influenced their work – I only have time to cover the inspirational fan-boy portrait of Anthony van Dyck, who was desperate to portray himself as the younger, cooler version of his idol Titian. The catalogue tells us that,

“Van Dyck’s (1599 -1641) collection was referred to by contemporaries as his ‘Cabinet de Titien,’ so dominated was it by the work of the sixteenth-century Venetian master. Exhibited alongside his studio and shown to patrons when paying visits, Van Dyck’s Titians played an important role in the creation and promotion of his own self-image as a pre-eminent painter of his age, and most particularly as the heir of Titian, the artistic predecessor he revered above all others”(Allison Goudie, 92).

So first of all, one day I wish to amass such an enormous collection of Martin Lewis prints (http://www.artnet.com/artists/martin-lewis/) that all my pals will start referring to my ‘Cabinet de Lewis;’ moreover, I want my ‘Cabinet de Lewis’ to garner me such renown and respect that patrons will have an immediate appreciation of my genius. In short, I want my prospective ‘Cabinet de Lewis’ to be an integral part of the “Sharon Fulton” brand. Aw yeah.

Even better, Van Dyck adopted a coy over-the-shoulder pose for his famous self-portrait in artistic imitation of the grand Venetian master, but Van Dyck one-upped Titian by portraying himself as a pretty boy with clear alabaster skin. Here's Titian's self-portrait:

And here's Van Dyck's self-portrait:

Titian might’ve been the humbler man…as humble as any artist can be, anyway. (Wink to my brilliant painter/sister, Denise.)

Van Dyck might’ve appreciated The National Gallery’s decision to magnify his self-portrait to epic proportions outside its mighty columns. The passing tourists look like itty-bitty ants compared to this seventeenth-century pop star.

It’s late, but next up on “Strange and Sundry” will be my goggle-eyed appreciation of The Wallace Collection. More soon!